SYDNEY: An Australian zookeeper on Tuesday urged people to catch and donate deadly funnel-web spiders, to help replenish stocks of antidote running low after a spate of spider bites.

The Australian Reptile Park, the country’s sole supplier of funnel-web venom to antidote producers since 1981, relies on the public to hand in spiders that are milked for the venom used to produce an antidote.

The anti-venom program was now at risk after too few spiders were donated last year and a recent heatwave encouraged more spider activity and bites, the park’s general manager, Tim Faulkner, said on Tuesday.

“We rely on community support to keep this program alive,” Faulkner said in a telephone interview.

“We have tried to catch enough spiders ourselves and we just can’t.”

Funnel-web spiders live throughout southeastern Australia, but the only known killer is the Sydney funnel-web spider, found in the Sydney region and as far north as Newcastle and south to Illawarra, the park says on its website.